I Have a First Grader

It's been a little over a month since the horrific shooting in Newton, Connecticut and I still feel it.  Every day.  I am the mother of a first grader - the exact same age of those twenty little souls that were brutally shot down while at school.

I feel it in the morning as I hurry my little boy along to get ready for school.  I look at his little body - leaping around the family room in nothing but his Spiderman undies and I think of his innocence.  I feel it when I kiss him goodbye and send him off to school.  I have always told me children "Love you!" when they leave for the day.  Well, almost always.  Not if we're in a hurry.  Not if carpool came early.  Not if... It's different now.  I make him look me in the eyes when I say it.  It's much more deliberate than it used to me. 

I feel it when I volunteer each week in his school.  I look around his classroom for places to hide.  I question whether or not I should point out that the teachers desk is located in a corner, and largely obscured by boxes and shelves.  Of course I shouldn't, right?  I don't want to scare him. He doesn't even know what happened.  I was careful not to watch any coverage when he was around.  But when I am there, I wonder if his little body would fit inside the closet.  I wonder how many children could hide in the few spots that are available. 

I feel it when I pick him up after school.  I watch the stream of children running and laughing at the end of the day and wonder how anyone could ever target such young children.  I hug my first grader and kiss him and look at the faces of the other parents who are hugging and kissing their children.  I think of the parents who don't have a child to hug and kiss and I can physically feel that pain. I look through his backpack overflowing with drawings and writings and I wonder "Should I save this stuff?  What if it's the last story I get to read?  What if it's the last drawing?"

I feel it when I see how completely young my first grader really is.  The day after the shootings I heard crying coming from my little boy's bedroom.  When I went in to see what was going on he had tucked himself into the corner and was sobbing because BB#1 had spoken to him "in a mean voice".  Last night he was scared to go to bed because he had seen a book with a picture of a vampire on the cover.  A picture.  Of something pretend.  To actually witness such a massacre would shape a young life in enumerable ways.  I think of the fear those children must have felt as they watched their teacher and classmates die.  I understand that one child did survive the actual shooting.  I'm so grateful he made it out alive, but I can't begin to imagine the degree to which his soul has been wounded.    I sometimes allow myself to think of my little boy having to witness such terror.  To do much more than begin that line of thought about does me in. 

I feel it at home when my first grader doesn't want to go to bed.  The week of the shooting my little boy had been having a series of bad dreams and wanted to sleep in our room.  Usually I make him sleep on the floor next to our bed when he needs to be a little closer to us.  That week I allowed him to sleep snugly between me and my husband.  It was a relief to have him so close, to feel his body rise and fall steady and sound.  A month later and I still want him close to me. When he has a hard time falling asleep I cuddle him until he drifts off.  It's as much for me and it is for him.  I can feel the warmth of his breath and it makes me feel simultaneously blessed and terrified. 

I felt it at church when the children were practicing their Christmas songs.  I had to walk out of the room when they were singing "It's Christmas Eve/I'm tucked in bed/I'm snug and warm/My prayers are said".  I felt it keenly on Christmas Eve as we laid out the cookies for Santa and my first grader was so excited he couldn't hold still.  I felt it Christmas morning as I looked at the opened presents.  For some reason I was fixated on the thought of unopened Christmas presents.  What does a parent do with those presents?  Give them away?  Donate them?  Redistribute those packages to other siblings?  How does a parent confront such a gut wrenching sight as unopened Christmas gifts?  I thought of those families a lot on Christmas day.

I feel it all the time.  I suppose it has made me cherish my little boy, and it has.  But it's not a pleasant kind of thing.  It's laced with fear and worry and desperation.  I put  myself in the place of those parents and I ache.  I see pictures on Facebook or in the  news and I see my own child.  It's not that I'm unwell, or crying a bunch, or am paralyzed.  But it's there, in the back of my mind.  And I feel that.